h stood a Scotch cart, covered with tarpaulin.
Peters himself slept at Lamont's, on whose farm these mining operations
were being conducted. In the ultimate success of these Peters had
immense faith. "We'll make another Sheba Reef out of this yet, Lamont,"
he was wont to declare. "This place has gold on it, and plenty, if we
only sink deep enough. You'll see it has." To which Lamont would reply
that he only hoped it might, but that he didn't for a moment believe it
would.

Who Peters was, or where he had come from, nobody knew. He was a
prospector, and had never been known as anything else. Some opined that
he had at one time been a sailor, and there were certain grounds for
believing this, in that he would, when off his guard, betray an
acquaintance both extensive and accurate with the technique of the sea.
Those who tried to draw him got no further. He never gave the idea of
being particularly anxious to conceal anything: simply he never talked
about himself. It was puzzling, but--there it remained.

Then certain inquisitive souls conceived the inspiration of getting him
to talk in his cups. But the drawback to the carrying of it out lay in
the fact that Peters never was in his cups. He could drink the whole
lot of them under the table, if put to it; and indeed did so, on more
than one occasion, sitting there smiling all the time, as they
reproachfully put it. Oh, he was a hard nail!

He was good-nature itself, as long as no one tried to take advantage of
it. When they did, then let them look out. His prime detestation was
`side,' as more than one young new arrival from England in the early
days discovered to his own amazement and discomfiture. His prime
predilection was Lamont, of whom, their mutual acquaintances were wont
to pronounce, he made a little tin god on wheels. Yet no two men could,
in character, be more utterly dissimilar.

Their friendship dated from the war of occupation, in which they had
both served. During the historic retreat on the Shangani, Lamont had
saved his life, and that under circumstances demanding an intrepidity
bordering on foolhardiness. Wounded and incapacitated, he had dropped
behind unnoticed what time the Matabele were pressing the sorely
harassed column, and Lamont had dashed back to his rescue when his
falling into the hands of the savages was but a question of moments--
already indeed had he placed his pistol to his head rather than be thus
captured. This wa